


The Future of Happiness and Rodney McKay

by mklutz



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 09:23:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mklutz/pseuds/mklutz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terrified of reaching the limits of his potential, Rodney McKay took preventative measures to ensure his future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_"The ambiguous relation of genius to insanity suggests that too much intelligence may have its own handicaps -- excessive sensitivity, for example, leading to proneness to anxiety and depression or, to the extent that rational intelligence is linked to self-centered attitudes ala Aryn Rand, it may result in a species even more unfeeling and cruel than we are now."_  
-Mihaly Cskszentimihaly, The Future of Happiness

"Rodney, are you listening?"

"Yes." No. There were no windows in the room. It was small and filled almost completely by a folding table and two cheap chairs. There was a mirror behind him on the wall.

"People like you, Rodney -- extraordinary people -- need the right environment. Do you know why, Rodney?"

She kept using his name, like it would help her remember it, like it would put him off his guard. "No." Yes.

"So you can reach your full potential. So you can make the most of everything you have to offer."

Rodney was terrified of reaching his full potential. He didn't want to get anywhere near it, because that implied that there was a limit, an end. Rodney wanted to reach the door, the hall, the next door, the elevator, the outside.

"We just want to help you reach that potential, Rodney." They wanted to get paid. Rodney didn't need to spend July and August in artificially cool and contemporary office after office so that person after person could tell him that he was smarter than they were. Rodney already knew.

"I'd like you to read this story to yourself in your head, Rodney."

They had shifted him from one room, office building and doctor to another, assessing. The tests, Rodney knew, were insufficient. The first day, they insulted him by starting with shapes, colours, counting, the alphabet. He was willing to forgive and pretend to forget because they hadn't met him before. 

On the second day, they worked up to pitiful attempts at pattern recognition, memory tests, reading and listening comprehension. 

On the third day, they asked for more time.

 

Dr. Kate Heightmeyer had shifted her definition of doctor-patient confidentiality since working on the Atlantis expedition. On paper, it was important to have a professional on the team to help the resident scientists through if it turned out that their trip to the Pegasus galaxy had been one-way. In practice, it was important that Elizabeth know if any person in Atlantis was a danger to his or her self from the mass of psychological effects a galaxy-wide war had on a person.

"And?" Elizabeth always set aside her papers and closed her laptop when Kate came to visit. She suspected it was partly the habitual manners of a diplomat and partly natural; the kind of thing that made Dr. Weir ideal. 

"This kind of work takes time. He's brilliant and surrounded by the challenging material that he's probably always needed."

"But...?"

"....but he has a lot to work through. Even if this had remained a scientific expedition..."

Dr. Weir sighed and smoothed two fingers down the top of her nose, between her eyebrows, pressing away the lines that formed there when she worried too much. "But it's not just a scientific expedition anymore, and we need him in the field."

"Interacting with people, aliens, dealing with social issues that he doesn't know how to react to."

"You told me he should be on a team."

"It's good for him." 

 

Atlantis was the only place in the universe that terrified Rodney as much as it made him want desperately to stay. He was surrounded by wonders that tore apart his conceptions piece by piece and replaced them with the kind of casual, dawdling fancy that had struck him watching Star Trek as a kid. When he was a teenager, it had been an acceptable distraction. Pointless, but amusing. Fun. He'd never thought the stuff that happened on campy sci-fi television shows would be the focus of his job.

"Kavanaugh thinks he has found a matter transmission device."

"As in, 'Beam me up, Scotty'?"

"Yes, as in, Oh dear lord, there are two of Major Sheppard now and one of them is evil." Rodney rolled his eyes at the ceiling while John leaned back in his chair, arms crossed and frowning a bit. 

"Is it feasible?"

"He thinks so." Rodney wanted to say No, and not just because Kavanaugh was a complete moron who had somehow managed to get on the team despite rigourous screenings. 

"Well, keep an eye on his work and try to make sure we don't wind up with two of Major Sheppard," Elizabeth said, eyes laughing, and Rodney relaxed a little, smiled a little. "Dr. Zelenka, you said you had..."

 

At the second parent-teacher conference of third grade, Rodney had been sent to the library to dig through the book-sale. His teacher -- he couldn't remember her name, just the awful sweaters she had worn -- had taken the time that Rodney spent digging through copies of Robert Asprin books to tell his parents that she believed he was learning disabled. 

He didn't know how the conversation had gone, couldn't imagine sitting someone down and saying, "Rodney just doesn't seem to be...." Seem to be what? Fitting in? Progressing? Interested?

All of the above, from day one.

 

Every problem Rodney faced in the Pegasus galaxy was monumental, life-changing, cosmos-shifting, and had the possible side effect of eradicating the entirety of the human race in the most vicious war the Earth would ever see.

"Dr. McKay!"

"Working," he snarled, waving whoever it was-- that person with the quiet shoes but he can never remember a face -- away; expressing the full extent of their complete unimportance in the face of his own work with a single hand gesture.

"But, Dr.McKay--!"

"Working," he repeated, stabbing one finger at the display and focusing on the shift and fluctuation of the pattern, "What part of that don't you understand?"

"Dr. Kavanaugh just de-materialized something!"

That, yes, warranted his looking away from the ancient device he had spent the morning studying. The morning and at least part of last night. 

T-minus ten days until three massive, foreign and deadly Wraith hive ships show up on the door-step and start gathering scientists and military men and diplomats into their egg-basket and stash them away for a midnight snack. 

T-minus ten days, sixteen hours until they activate the gate back to Earth, if they can find a power source, and start a whole new Wraith holiday. The equivalent of Thanksgiving, Rodney thought, and made a note to bring that up the next time Sheppard tried to get them all killed. Maybe he could ruin every not-really-turkey sandwich the man would ever eat again. The word harvest bounced around in the back of his head. This was probably how some people became xenophobic.

"And has it re-materialized somewhere, intact?"

"Well..." That was a no, then.

"Tell Kavanaugh to stop wasting time and start figuring out if he can get it to de-materialize the Wraith right out of their ships and into holding cells. Tell Kavanaugh to figure out how to build enough holding cells to hold three Hive ship's worth of Wraith. Better yet, get someone else to make sure Kavanaugh doesn't kill us all with the blinding light of his sheer inanity and incompetence!"

They leave him alone for the rest of the day.

The device turns out to be a PVR. 

 

Rodney slept four and a half hours before he staggered up from the stool, back aching, and poured himself more coffee. If only, If only, his brain half-hums, and half-awake, Rodney let the probably completely useless thought drift to the foreground right beside, Good, coffee, work soon. If only, his brain said, we knew what we needed, and how it would work, and how to make it work, how it would save us.

Which, yes, was completely stupid and irrational, and Rodney brushed the thought aside for exactly six hours, thirteen minutes and twenty-three seconds before his hand found the Gun in a pile of devices discarded by the rest of his team.

"Why haven't we used this?" he demanded of the nearest wide-eyed incompetent hack. "This, this!" He extrapolated, gesturing widely at it to make it clear that yes, he really was talking about the gun-shaped device he was waving in the moron's face. 

"It's... it's not offensive or defensive, Dr. McKay. It appears to be recreational, or educational."

Leave it to a team comprised of the over-paid, supposed best minds his home planet had to offer to completely ignore something potentially tide-turning.

 

On the fourth day, they took Rodney to another small room nearly identical to the room from day three. The only difference was that instead of a mirror behind him, there was a window behind the analyst sitting across from him. A small, square, flat window the exact same size and shape as the mirror from day three had been. It was placed exactly at the same height off the floor and looked into a room that looked exactly like the room from day three.

The analyst started Rodney off with a series of equations and told him there was no time limit. Rodney wasted the first forty-two and a half seconds feeling sick to his stomach.

 

"I'm not paranoid."

"I didn't say you were."

He wanted to add that you're only paranoid if no one really is out to get you, but that's such a typical, average-intelligence response that his hands clench to stop his mouth from giving away the fact that he is, with fair regularity, as much of a moron as his staff.

Dr. Heightmeyer stared at him during their sessions. Not rudely, or sexually, or as if he were an animal in a cage, or as if she were watching him through a two-way mirror, but just as if she were waiting for a response, waiting for Rodney to give the game away. Rodney had never been patient, never been good at holding his tongue.

"I'm better off knowing they were watching me, anyway. I read the report. 'Makes no use of, nor shows any reliance upon, coping strategies'." 

"Is that true?"

"I'm a genius, Dr. Heightmeyer." He even lifted his head a little, looked down his nose at her a little to emphasize just how smart he supposedly was. The long stare she gave him in return meant that he hadn't answered the question. I know, Rodney wanted to yell at her, I know already so you don't have to tell me!

Rodney's whole life has been a coping strategy. He just didn't need to count on his fingers.

 

"It's like-- it's like Trillian in Hitchhiker's Guide," was the best explanation he could come up with, "and the gun-- the--the gun."

"The point-of-view gun?" Sheppard looks disgustingly well-rested. The only reason Rodney didn't hate him, aside from his helpful Sheppard qualities was that Rodney knew they'd probably had about the same amount of sleep.

"How does it work?" Elizabeth leaned forward then, listening with her whole body. A meeting like this one took up precious time, especially with the city preparing for a full-out siege, and any time when he had her full attention was a sign of how important he was to the city. How important, and how useless, his brain added. 

"You fire it directly into your eyes and it sends information, ideas, schematics -- anything -- directly into your brain via a burst of light."

"Like your compressed data burst."

"Yes, exactly!"

"How long do the effects last? Can you choose what information is... downloaded, for lack of a better term?" Zelenka would be bouncing in his seat if he were here, but he was working on a now probably irrelevant self-destruct plan.

"I don't know."

 

"Rodney?"

"I don't know." Day twenty-three of the summer vacation between grades three and four found Rodney more fed-up with the incessant testing of his intelligence than anything else. Rodney had read articles that argued about peak periods for learning with the human life-span. There had been points about language-aquisition being best in the first few years, about how boys and girls did better at math at different ages because of puberty, hormones, iron levels. At what age vocabulary levels off and is unlikely to increase by any great means, when new ideas don't stick as well, creativity drops off and experience takes over, where the human brain's ability to absorb, adapt to and apply new information becomes so pitiful that it's almost pointless to even try anymore. 

Rodney thought they were wasting precious time. His precious time.

"I think you do know, Rodney. Please answer the question."

"I don't know," he ground out, sliding down against the cheap plastic chair. The man across the table from him sighed and moved on to the next question, and the next. 

On day twenty-four, they told his parents he should take a day off.

 

If his pre-adolescent years after the testing had been the springtime of Rodney's brain, Atlantis was going to have his summer years. That was what Rodney had told himself when he signed with Stargate Command and volunteered his services. His brain was exceptional, so far beyond average that he was sure that average drop-off points didn't apply to him. 

Rodney's brain ran like someone had cast haste on it repeatedly, or equipped it with speed-enhancing accesories. He imagined that he was the Thief in role-playing games. High speed, high intelligence, leadership qualities, and a dark edge that makes him more appealing than the Black Mage but less boringly good than the Knight. 

When he got to Atlantis, Rodney realized that he had only ever been a pawn. Maybe one of those Small Town Exposition characters who passes on some hint about how to get to the secret entrance to the Temple but really knows nothing about how it works. Necessary. Key. Ultimately useless.

This was not summer, the long months of warmth, progress, planting and sowing of crops. This was not the season of endless days and slow nights with more than time enough to solve every problem two galaxies could throw at him. 

This was the autumn of Rodney's intelligence, and Rodney would do almost anything to not reach his potential.

 

Two days after running test after test on the gun and a pair of lab mice with no recognizable effects, the silent, deafening countdown ticking away in the back of Rodney's head hands him an ultimatum.

His ego helped mount the charge.

 

 

For all the times that Rodney had called his team an assembly of hacks, his brain had shot the words right back at him. Rodney had spent years playing 'I'm rubber, You're glue', except that their roles had quickly reversed. His team learned to ignore pointless criticism and listen only to the corrections, suggestions Rodney made. His brain had started compiling the insults.

Moron, stupid, useless, Do You Have a Death Wish Or Are You Just Trying To Kill Me?

The device was possibly deadly, probably dangerous and he still had no idea what any side-effects might be, how long the effects would last, what information might hit his brain. He didn't even know if it would actually harm him because his brain worked differently from the Ancients'. 

The bit that tips the tide is his brain saying, the only reason it wouldn't work is because you're too stupid for the information to stick.

"Hey, Rodney, figure it out yet?"

 

 

"You can't limit yourself, Rodney. There's no such thing." What he's really saying is, 'Put it down, please, put it down, don't do this, please, don't, don't, don't--', "The only thing that limited you on Earth was what we had available. But we're on Atlantis," 'please, please, I'll do anything, say anything, just please--', "There's nothing holding you back here. Think of all the things you've discovered already--"

"Re-discovered," Rodney interrupts. He's only pausing, listening to John because it's the polite thing to do, the kind of thing friends do. He's feeling a little extra Canadian just then.

"You made sense of them when no one else could! And you found solutions to problems that have nothing to do with figuring out Ancient technology. You're already the best there is. The best there ever was." 'Please, please, please--'

"I can be better," Rodney says, and pulls the trigger.

 

Rodney had figured it out quickly but denied it as truth to save his ego. He really was the most important person on the expedition, but not because he could re-define space time, or prove every Nobel Peace Prize winner in the field of physics to be both obsolete and incorrect. He was important because he could figure out how to make use of the things the Ancients had discovered and put them to use in the primitive, post-war way that was typical of his generation. His every effort to date had been childish, clumsy, and insufficient.

He needed a better knowledge base. He needed to work knowing already how they worked, how the universe was really constructed. He needed to be like the Ancients.

When he had the same knowledge they did, then he'd know if he really was bright, or if he was just a hack, stumbling over their footsteps. Rodney needed to know that there was no such thing as reaching his potential.

 

He pulls the trigger and pulls the trigger and pulls the trigger and pulls the trigger. Over and over and over, light flooding his pupils, bursts of information shot straight through to his brain, triggering synapses to fire repeatedly. Rodney imagines his brain under an MRI, lighting up like fireworks on the first of July. And while his finger mashes the trigger repeatedly and John tries to tackle him to the ground, to move his arm, pull the gun from his hand, Rodney wonders why his brain isn't kicking in with images of what it would look like right now if it were under the machine that is an Ancient Not-MRI-But-Better.

Instead, he finds darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

_Do I dare  
Disturb the universe?  
In a minute there is time  
For decisions and revisions that a minute will reverse._  
-T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Day not-twenty six, Rodney spent in the basement working on The Project. Summer was his favourite season, not because of the weather, but the timing. 

Rodney abhorred the sweltering heat of summer along the US-Canada border. They were far enough North that the winters were long, bitterly cold and frequently piled high with so much snow that he had to wake up early in order to slog through it on his way to school. Rodney didn't like the cold, but it was preferable to the heat, humidity and relentless, blind inescapable pressure of summer. Thirty-plus degrees in the shade, not including humidity. Sunburns, sunstroke, heat stroke. Rodney had even had a seizure once or twice from heat-exhaustion and hypoglycaemia. 

In summer, Rodney stayed inside, preferably in the basement where it was dark and damp and blessedly cool. In the basement his parents left him alone and let him "play". Of course, he had stopped playing and started working on his experiments and projects sometime during grade one. 

School was boring. The other kids were really abhorrently stupid, incapable of even finishing the most basic assignments, and the teachers talked down to him like he was a moron. Rodney had quickly given up on trying to find anything interesting to do at school. He finished his work early without hardly reading it and set it aside to work things out in his head.

Rodney didn't need paper. Paper would be nice, but the last time he had tried to work something out by hand, Chris Woods had drawn all over it. Working things out in his head was faster anyway, and put a look on his face that the others had quickly learned meant Do Not Disturb.

Summer time meant time alone in the basement without teachers or other students or assigned work. Summer time meant dark, damp, cool work.

 

"All right, what do we know?"

Elizabeth sits tense behind one of the many angled tables of the large conference room, actively keeping her fingers from tapping, fidgeting, twisting against any available surface. 

"The Ancients used an entirely different mode of thought than we do," one of the scientists begins, "Not just a different approach to problem solving but a physically different way of thinking. Their brains worked differently."

"How differently?"

"Even among Earth-humans, the way people think is split. Men tend to think with one quadrant of their brain at a time with a deep focus. Women tend to use two quadrants of their brains at a time." The scientist paused for a moment, then shook his head. "The point is, the Ancients, as best we can figure, used all four quadrants of their brains at the exact same time."

"I've heard the sociologists," John speaks up, "think the ancient people spent most of their time meditating." He's not leaning back in his chair, not slouching, his arms aren't crossed. His best friend is in a catatonic state.

"Yes, in order to facilitate ascension. The anthropologists believe that the meditation is actually one step in allowing the full, simultaneous use of the brain. Ascension may be what occurs when a human or Ancient is capable of using 100% of the brain simultaneously. The body becomes redundant."

"But what does all this mean?" 

"It means Rodney's in trouble."

 

It comes slowly. When Rodney wakes in the infirmary, he feels no different from before, feels no sudden pressure of knowledge pulsing out through his skull or skin or hands. He only feels a kind of low anger and shame, disappointment that it didn't work, irrational thoughts clashing with each other. 

Carson takes half a day to run tests; half a day of wasted time when three Wraith hive ships are descending on the city and they still have no option other than a half-assed and ultimately incomplete plan to shatter the city.

No one says a word about the device. Side effects, faults, inappropriate use of an Ancient device, even; not a word. Rodney takes that to mean that it was harmless, that they have more important things to do and that finally, finally, they are looking at the big picture.

He reads. He sorts through the Ancient database while his team works on incomplete theories, incorrect assumptions, on compressing data to send through the gate. It is only thirteen hours later that he realizes that something has changed. He doesn't recognize or understand the material immediately; it isn't hardwired into his brain, but the background information is there.

Floating in his subconscious is a kind of Ancient Primer, and the more he reads, the larger it grows, the more he knows, the more the picture becomes clear. 

The more he hates the people around him, who commit the crime of being alive but useless, and of distracting him. The more he fills in the blanks. 

Ancient technology is beautiful; more beautiful than he had thought it before because now he understands the clean design at a level he couldn't before. There is no wasted space, no useless wiring. Every part and piece is a multi-tasker, holds more than one job and fulfills each one simultaneously. Even the casing serves as a transmitting device, prevents outside influence from scrambling any data. The surface of the pieces, the creases and cracks and pores of them, hold an infinite number of self-replicating nano-bots that connect the brain activity of ATA carriers to the machine.

The ghost in the machine, his mind whispers, and Rodney presses one palm to the skin of a Jumper, breathing deeply for a moment and imagining the schematics of the nano-bots, their tiny impulses firing at a miniscule level. A population of perfect communication.

It is beautiful.

 

"I haven't seen any negative effects so far," Carson reports, "other than some crankiness, but that's only natural what with--" he gestures helplessly in the direction of the monitor displaying the three hives inching closer to Atlantis. 

"So no evidence that the information is overloading him in any way? None?"

"None. If anything, the device seems to be working."

Working. Elizabeth feels hope flutter into existence somewhere in her left wrist, the pulse of it wired into her brain. 

It is terrifying.

 

This, he thinks sometime later, is intuition. And it should scare him or bother him or irritate him; his brain making jumps from the question to the answer with no steps in between, no logical flow from A to Z. But he doesn't have time to worry. So he doesn't.

 

In the third grade, Rodney was sent home with a note for his parents. The note, in short, said this:

Your son does not know the times tables. Please do some exercises with him or hire a tutor.

Few things would have been further from the truth. Rodney knew the times tables. He knew 1-10 backwards and forwards. He just didn't see the point in being quizzed daily on something so mundane.

Later that year, his teacher sent him home with a second note. In short, it said:

Your son is illiterate. Please do some exercises with him or hire a tutor.

In the fall, Rodney moved to grade ten.

 

Knowing of these events, a person is capable of coming to a better understanding of Rodney McKay's character. From a very young age, Rodney knew that other people were incredibly likely to be incredibly wrong. They started at the correct premise (Rodney never does his times tables; Rodney never reads in class) and then flat-out ignored the evidence (Rodney's obvious, incredible brilliance) in order to draw completely, abysmally, life-threateningly incorrect assumptions (Rodney is stupid). 

Rodney knew exactly what they said about the word assume.

That was why he loved the scientific method. And not just the scientific method, but logic proofs, well-thought out arguments, rhetorical devices, carefully plotted experiments. A logic proof only worked if every piece of it was correct. If A, then, then, then. Beautiful, clean final conclusions laid out neatly so that anyone could follow along.

A hypothesis was like a logic proof that never ended. If A, then, then, then--but what if? What if, then, then, then, what if? If it didn't work, you started back at the premise, or re-wrote it. You corrected each element with strict scrutiny in order to end up at a solid, clean conclusion that could, if needed, be further improved upon at a later date. A hypothesis took in all current data and accounted for it, applied it. 

In experiments, Rodney had array after array of test variables and as many controls as he felt were necessary. In experiments, Rodney based his premises on hard data: The periodic table, known chemical reactions, the laws of conservation, the laws of the universe. The laws of physics. 

Of all the sciences, Rodney loved Physics best. Physics was all about hard data leading to predictable results; hard conclusions. Patterns, algorithms. In physics, everything fell into place, but there was still room for him to experiment, to ask what if, what if, what if?

Physics was reliable.

Physics ended in plausible, predictable outcomes.

This, Dr. Heightmeyer said, explained a lot. "He's dependant on predictable results," she said at the meeting that week. "His field, his history, his high level of intelligence demand it. He loves predictable results as much as he loves following a new problem in order to find them."

This didn't really mean anything to the only other person in the room. She was waiting for her to explain. 

"A phobia often results from a situation in which the patient has no control. His phobias are primarily health-related, and specifically related to the variables he is incapable of changing."

"Bee-stings," Elizabeth spoke up, and she nodded.

"And citrus." And a hundred other things, went unsaid. "Clearly, Rodney felt that his intelligence was threatened by the current... situation." 

Three Wraith hive ships, Elizabeth figured, might have that effect.

 

Rodney's psych profile included files and notes from over twenty doctors. Ten of them fell within a two-year period when Rodney would have been in early grade school. Five of them were scattered over his brief but incredibly intense University years. Four had been completed on military commission, and the last was constantly updated by Dr. Kate Heightmeyer.

The earliest reports contained a lot of nothing. Basic notes on Rodney's ability to perceive shapes, colours; his complete lack of coping mechanisms because, at that point, they had yet to give him a problem he couldn't solve in his head. Soon after, they had incorporated some very serious personality analysis into his regular testing.

Rodney had been smart enough to recognize it; young enough not to care to lie. 

It wasn't that Rodney didn't care to interact with people his own age, it was that it was actually uncomfortable, and with very good reason. The rate, the level at which Rodney's brain worked meant that the usual conversations, arguments and friendships perpetrated by his age group and gender were superfluous. Rodney's brain interacted better with adults, partly because of his vocabulary, partly because of his ideas. He wasn't very mature, but he was stubborn and smart and needed to be treated as an equal in conversation.

In childhood, there is no such thing as equality.

There are hierarchies and power-struggles and fatal flaws. Playground tragedies in which one leader is deposed and replaced in the space of a recess; the entire classroom rearranging itself around the new position of power. 

Power was meaningless to Rodney in relation to his peers. He didn't need to be picked first for dodge-ball or asked to pair up with someone fun for projects. Rodney preferred to work alone, to work quickly, and to surpass the expectations, the limitations of a project.

Which was how, in the two years they had spent living south of the border, he had been questioned by the CIA over his sixth-grade science fair project, ("Strictly a working model!" he had screeched at their blank faces, "Do you incompetent morons actually believe a twelve-year old has access to weapons-grade Plutonium?!") and then been offered a part-time job. 

The government of Canada, faced with paperwork over a twelve-year old citizen who had possibly, maybe, kind-of-sort-of accidentally-on-purpose built a weapon of mass destruction in the public sphere of their nearest ally, processed his work visa remarkably quickly.

Rodney did not have what might be called close friends until after his third doctorate. By then he was old enough that the people he worked with didn't talk down to him or exclude him; young enough that he earned their incredulous respect.

He was also of drinking age in most countries.

Rodney's mind had, from a very young age, been almost entirely consumed with work. His thoughts raced day and night, whether he was awake, asleep, reading, watching tv or sitting on the can. 

He would not reach emotional maturity until he was into his third decade of life.

 

"The satellite we discovered will need repairs. If properly fixed," and Rodney preens a little on the inside where it doesn't take any time or waste any motion, "it will be more than capable of defeating the three hives."

"And if more come?" Elizabeth asks. Sheppard looks like he wants to change that if to a when. 

"Not a problem."

 

Rodney even knew where to scavenge parts from. The more he understood, the more the layout of Atlantis made sense. He had forgone any sleep the night before in order to accomplish several small tasks: indexing the ancient database, refining his compression algorithm, and fully labeling a map of the city. When he returned from the satellite, he would begin several instruction manuals for the more important devices. 

They will have all the time in the world.


	3. Chapter 3

_She's all states, and all princes I;  
Nothing else is._  
-John Donne, The Sun Rising

Atlantis was an unusual environment. In terms of social interactions, it was a closed space. The expedition team was about sixty-five percent scientists and thirty-five percent military presence, and each and every individual was away from his or her home territory. They were inside the bounds of no particular country, under no truly defined rules as set by a particular government. While they had the Stargate and could travel to other worlds, off-world travel was limited to specific teams, and even then friendly faces were rare.

Isolation. 

On the other hand, personnel were in close quarters at all times. Actual "live" sectors of the city only accounted for a small percentage of the over-all space due to power constraints. The Gate Room served as a city-centre with all activity spiralling out around it, dense, close, packed. Labs, living quarters, military space; all of it taking up as much room as maybe two large high schools, surrounded by empty, dead hallways that could probably overlap with most of Manhattan. If you didn't run into someone in the halls, chances were that was due to a hostage situation. 

It had to happen eventually, really. When Rodney yells at his staff, or his team, or his bosses, or the soldiers, no one cowers or ducks or takes cover. They laugh or grin or yell back. That's how he knew he was in the right place, doing the right things with the right people. Everyone on the base is at least moderately intelligent in their respective fields, even the grunts and the cooks. They know what they're doing, they know Rodney is all bark and no bite, and they're not afraid to fight back. Rodney actually prefers that they fight back. Obviously.

But Rodney is also not the most social of people. He can go for weeks without talking to anyone while working on a theory, and he doesn't miss that interaction. After his work has reached a stable point, he'll talk endlessly with sharp, wide-sweeping gestures and exaggerated expressions; will pack all those weeks of missed interaction into a small space, but at the end of the day he still wants time alone. Space. 

And now, well, Rodney has far better things to do with his time than patronize people with mundane questions. His brain is so full of understanding and information and ideas coalescing in his subconscious that it might actually be better, he thinks, if everyone took the week off until the Wraith attack would be over. Just give him some space and quiet so he can work without having to worry about the others mindlessly prodding the delicate and very dangerous equipment.

The headache builds slowly.

Partly, it is probably due to a lack of sleep. But who needs sleep when there's work to be done and so much information spilling out? Not Rodney. Rodney is busy. Rodney is important. Rodney is the only person with enough understanding of Ancient tech to rub together.

Partly, it is probably due to being surrounded by frantic idiots. There is something about having three hives descending (though that's really the wrong word, he thinks, since regardless of whether or not they are on a planet, the ships are in space and so there is no "up" or "down", there is only that way or this way) that makes people freak out. Makes them freak out as if they didn't fully trust that Rodney McKay, certified genius, could get them out alive. 

Except they're not going anywhere. They're going to blow the hives away like dandelion fluff, with a soft exhalation of breath. Nothing more, nothing less. It will require less effort than most events to date have.

 

"Just stick that one next to this one," Rodney gestures impatiently, his other hand fully occupied with a third ancient device. "And make sure they're touching."

"But Dr. McKay, these two devices have nothing to do with each other!"

Rodney spares a look out of the corner of his eye. "They're both Ancient. That's all they need to have in common." Common in an entirely different sense from the one he's currently ascribing to a certain scientist's intelligence.

"But--"

"Nanobots! It ran out of nanobots and so obviously it needs a transfer for just a few seconds and then they can replicate on their own!" The scientist shoves the two devices together with clumsy, killing hands (he is so, so fired when they find a way to contact Earth and the SGC) and storms out of the room.

"Rodney," and Zelenka has the right idea, at least sounds a little angry, "I do not believe that shouting at him was necessary. This is not like you." What? What? So much for Zelenka.

 

"Elizabeth," Carson says, stepping into her office and closing the door, "I'm afraid we have a problem."

Atlantis is, in so many ways, one problem and one gift after another. "What is it?"

"I've been researching the device," he explains, hands tucked and pressed deep into the pockets of his lab-coat, a nervous gesture, "and I don't think it was meant to be used repeatedly. Major Sheppard said that Rodney fired it several times--" over and over and over, Sheppard had said, eyes a little wild and hands clenched against his thighs, "but I believe that it only required a single fire."

"Possible effects?" She needs to cut straight to the point; there are two days left after today.

"I don't know, but certainly nothing good."

If one of the other scientists were in the room, one of the meaner ones or someone pointedly unkind, they might have made a blue screen of death joke. Elizabeth's hand goes to her radio.

 

The Puddle Jumper is already two-thirds of the way to the satellite. There is no point in recalling it when they are already so close to the goal, to a very serious first line of defence. There is also no point in advising either of the members accompanying Rodney to watch for any unusual behaviour. He would hear, or know, or observe, and that could only make things worse.

Elizabeth took thirty-three seconds to stare at her hands and wish she could fix everything. That was all the time she could devote to regrets.

 

In the two years that Rodney had lived in the States, three things had bothered him. One was that the money all looked the same, which was stupid when you wanted to just dig into your wallet and grab something blue to pay for your coffee with. He shouldn't have to look at the numbers on the boring not-quite-green papers. Also, the pictures on their currency sucked. 

The second was that people laughed at him for his accent, his slang and sometimes even his common word usage or spelling. Frequently, they asked him if he was sure, because of the Raising*. Which was stupid, because everyone knew that chesterfield and serviette and zed were perfectly acceptable words used just about everywhere except in America**.

The third, and the most annoying of all, was the forced educational interaction. While Rodney was mentally in his third year of University (College they called it there, even though if he had been in Toronto his college would have been a sub-set of his University or, god forbid, a technical school), the teachers and doctors at his very expensive school thought that he needed to "interact with people his own age". Which meant that three days a week Rodney attended third year lectures at the College, and two days a week he was forced to sit through a "gifted" grade six class. (Sixth grade they called it.) 

Grade six was boring, stupid, pointless, and filled with moronic barely-teenaged girls who fussed over what colour to paint their nails and boys who spent much of their time snickering over Dr. Who and completely missing the point of any given episode.

Social Interaction, Rodney learned quickly, was really, really dumb.

 

The only real problem Rodney had found with the device was that the information didn't make him a better pilot, or make the Ancient tech respond to him any faster or more easily. He knew what things did, intuited how to fix them, but as for skill or finesse, he still needed a pilot (often Sheppard), other pairs of hands. A device that should have made Rodney more fully autonomous and independently capable only made him feel more dependent than he ever had before.

It was almost a physical pain, that incompetence.

His headache built, slowly.

 

The rear compartment was stocked with two Naquadah generators, several control crystals, some of the smooth, cool Ancient wiring and a pile of the clumsy, awkward tools that Earthlings used for fixing delicate equipment. Rodney spent eighteen minutes moving the equipment to the front compartment and re-sorting it into bags for use in a zero-gravity environment or, god forbid, in space. "Whose bright idea was this?"

While Grodin was smart enough to play technician on some of the control-centre equipment, he was certainly nowhere near Rodney's intelligence, even pre-device. Miller, their pilot, was so incredibly less intelligent that he barely ranked as "sentient" on Rodney's current sliding-scale, and his piloting skills were certainly no match for Sheppard's. 

Fifteen hours in a 'Jumper with two morons was nowhere near Rodney's definition of fun. Not that he had much time for fun lately-- there was far too much work to do before the Wraith arrived.

The amount of space being wasted, devices being uselessly prodded back in the city without his input was enough to have him twitchy twenty minutes into the ride.

 

It looked a lot like some of the crystals Rodney had seen under microscopes in his chemistry classes. Sharp, angular and direct spikes extending away from a central point; beautiful like something found in nature, efficient like few man-made things would ever be. Even dark and without power it had a look of light about it, some undefinable sparkle that danced along the relays under Rodney's skin and made his hands itch to touch it. 

If he could get this working he could finally use some of the knowledge filtering through his brain to invent something new.

Second-generation Atlantean equipment.

 

"How much can we save?"

"Pardon?"

'The Ancient database," Elizabeth clarified, crossing her arms and staring past the self-destruct simulation. "We brought hundreds of hard-drives with us originally. How much do you think we could save?"

"With Rodney's improved compression code?" Zelenka's eyes lifted upwards to some imaginary visual mathematics hovering just above his forehead. "Ten... maybe thirteen?"

"Percent?" 

How do you decide what parts of a civilization to save when you don't know what they were trying to tell you?

 

Even docking the Jumper was clean, easy; parts sliding into place like less than ten thousandths of a second had passed since their last activation instead of ten thousand years. His space suit took away some of the elegance and clarity from the situation, of course, but there were precautions that had to be taken. Oxygen levels, pressurization, power sources... A necessary evil designed some decades ago. 

 

Grodin was really a perfect example of how far beyond them all Rodney was. Peter Grodin was agruably one of the best and brightest technicians on Atlantis, which was why Rodney and Elizabeth had agreed that he should be in charge of the main control centre above the Gateroom in the first place.

But Grodin was so incredibly dumb. Compared to Rodney he was a complete moron, incapable of following even the simplest of requests.

"Hold on," Rodney snapped, "I need to--"

Gravity re-engaged.

 

"Ow!" 

"Sorry! I thought you were ready!"

"Obviously," And Rodney snarled, face pressed numb and tingling back into firm awareness of pain, "not." Clumsy was exactly the word to describe these people and their weak technology and non-existent understanding and their medical voo-doo that had yet to cure his ever-increasing headache. 

Vertebrae damage, part of his brain supplied un-helpfully. A quick wiggle and shift proved otherwise, but he took Miller's hand-up and rubbed at the small of his back before heading directly to what was probably the main panel. 

A quick scan of the display proved that the fault within the system was not power-generation as they had originally thought but distribution. A misplaced or damaged connector, which thankfully Rodney had thought ahead to. This was a war satellite and a key piece of defensive technology. The Ancients wouldn't have let that sit because of some measly power problem.

Just in case though, he hooked up one of the Naquadah generators.

 

"We are at war, Elizabeth," Radek said slowly, carefully, "and in war, there are casualties."

 

"The power conduit's been hit," Grodin said from another display a moment after Rodney had begun to explain the situation. "We'll need to re-route around the damaged circuits."

"Your grasp of the painfully obvious," Rodney sneered, "never fails to impress me, Peter." Grodin rolled his eyes in response, and Miller just twitched a small smile. Morons, the lot of them. 

"The damaged circuit should be located somewhere here," he continued in spite of them.

"That's outside the ship!"

"Yes, Miller, it is. Lovely to see that you're still with us." You want something done? You've got to do it yourself.

 

Do it yourself was what Rodney had learned to do through over a decade of post-secondary education. When the curriculum was too base, the Professor too blind, the student population too hopelessly inept, Rodney had written over a hundred personal papers and submitted them to various scientific journals and committees. 

Which was why, while the rest of his class had been entering third year, Rodney had been turning down a teaching position, accepting his next diploma, his next honorary degree, and then accepting a job with the military.

He had never seen a member of his first year Astrophysics class again.

 

 

The big positive about the team was that all three of them were inoculated with the ATA gene therapy, and that it had taken in each very quickly. Additionally, Grodin and Miller had some technical training. "Miller, you'll stay inside to confirm the connection. I, obviously," and he had to gulp a little inside at the thought of some slight agoraphobia in relation to floating free in space on the outside of a military satellite 15 Puddle-hours from Atlantis, "will do the actual repairs, and Grodin will pilot so that, if needed, he can pass me further tools."

 

Having much of the workings accessible via the outside of the satellite had originally seemed silly and unlike the usual, highly efficient designs of the Ancients until he had remembered Ascension. In an energy state the vacuum would hardly matter and repairs would be little more than a flicker of one mind against the circuitry. Rodney could only imagine how clean, how light and discreet it would be; like the fluttering of a heartbeat, a pulse through the thin layers of skin at the wrist. 

Instead, he had to fumble in his overly-large, one-size-fits-all space suit, large fingered gloves clambering over the panel and inside to lay connections between points, to replace a fractured piece with something suitably if not perfectly similar from the city. Brilliant foresight on his part, if matched with awkward execution.

They had Forty-five minutes left. 

 

 

"We're good on this end, McKay," and Rodney was grateful to stumble back into the rear-compartment, to feel his feet settle into the floor and pull off the suit; breathe real, honest-to-goodness unlimited air. No time limit required. "Power is building and we'll be ready to fire by the time the Wraith get here."

"We'll pick you up now," Grodin spoke up from the controls, "We should have a few minutes."

"No, get a fair distance from the satellite and cloak. You can pick me up after we've destroyed the hives." Military through and through, and for once Rodney agreed.

 

 

The Wraith ships emerged from the spidery-light of hyper-space with a jolt, and even cloaked, Rodney shivered. They were massive and bright and dark and very, very near. The first blast, a lean yellow-green beam, cut through the large ship easily. It fell apart in the middle of nowhere, collapsing and exposing it's innards to space. 

"Yes!" Grodin breathed, tapping into communications with Atlantis again. "Weir, this is Grodin. We have a kill!"

"Good work! Keep us informed." Elizabeth was barely audible over the cheering. 

"Will do, Atlantis."

The second shot from the satellite fired at the exact same time as a barrage from the next hive; sharp green attack sliding past multiple fragmentary shots. For a moment, it was too bright to tell what had happened. Another dead hive in the water; the sides of the satellite singed.

"Miller, come in! Miller!"

The only response was one last cutting beam from the satellite amid complete radio silence.

 

"Jumper three, come in; report."

"All three hives have been neutralized!" Rodney was fairly bouncing in his seat; giddy at his own success. 

"We may have lost Miller," Grodin said, all too seriously. "We still have to check the satellite."

"That's not important right now! We took down three hive ships in less than ten minutes! We should be celebrating! Cele--"

"Rodney? Rodney?" Frustrating to be on the other side of a radio connection with little to no idea as to what was happening on the other end.

"He's seizing!"

 

 

Sergeant Miller died of an electrical overload just seconds after the hive barrage. The satellite was not built to be staffed during combat, and the impact of the attack had been dispersed through the satellite in an electrical charge. At the sheer level of power involved, death had probably been nearly instantaneous.

Rodney remained unconscious for four days in the Atlantis infirmary after his seizure aboard the Jumper; temperature raised in a moderate fever. 

"His brain couldn't handle the stress," Beckett said, adjusting Rodney's IV. "He should come to soon enough, though."

"Yeah, sure, but why hasn't he woken up yet?" 

"Radek thinks his brain is...rebooting." Beckett shrugged in Sheppard's general direction. 

"Yes, cleaning out unusable interface," Zelenka nodded, pressing his glasses back up his nose and glancing at Elizabeth. "Return to last restart."

"Are you saying the device put something like a virus in Rodney's brain?"

"No, no! Not at all! Just wrong software."

"That's the worst analogy I've ever heard," Rodney groaned, "And I hate you all."

 

Upon firing the device, Rodney had seen stars. They were bright and had filled the whole of his vision, blinding him to anything but the light and the flashes of brilliance shot directly into his brain.

Watching the funeral rites for Miller, he knows that those stars were less bright than these lives are. Those stars could never match, even given an infinity of time and space, the impression a single breath from a single living being at any given moment. 

I never want to see stars again, he thinks, and turns away to hurl.

 

The Daedalus arrived later that week, ready to fight a battle that was already over. They came bearing a nearly-full ZPM, a large number of highly trained staff and military, and a ride home. Colonel Caldwell came ready to do battle, and seemed almost disappointed that the major fight was already over.

"Not quite," Elizabeth told him in their first meeting. "They know exactly where we are and exactly what our defences are. We're still a sitting duck."

 

Rodney, on the other hand, remembered everything and nothing. While the intuition and understanding the device had temporarily gifted him with had faded, he retained the knowledge he had applied in those few days alongside full memory of how he had acted and felt; how unimportant Miller's death had felt inside his own mind. He felt guilty for not caring, and then mourned the loss of the knowledge he had been on the path of before feeling guilty for that; a loop he had trouble escaping.

The Wraith were still coming, and he had work to do. His headache was finally gone.

 

An excerpt from Dr. K.Heightmeyer's final report on the mental status of Dr. R. McKay:

Every person follows predictable, repetitive patterns. Their path from bed to bathroom, their favourite restaurants, meals, activities. Regularly scheduled social events-- soccer practice and Hockey Night in Canada. Dr. McKay is no exception. He strives constantly to increase the field and application of his knowledge; to increase his base of material. His extraordinary intelligence limits, on occasion, his observation and understanding of human interactions. It has been evident in his habits, activities, his social tendencies. The device in question was designed for a different people and may be a case of too much, too soon. 

Many of the highly intelligent races were have encountered in the Universe have been either incredibly detached or incredibly vicious. All reports indicate that the Wraith are possibly further along developmentally than we ourselves are, and their disregard for life including their own is incredible. The Ancients who built this city made machines that would work only for their own kind, seemingly uncaring that the Wraith posed a threat to all other inhabitants, not only of this galaxy, but of others as well.

It is possible that too much intelligence is as dangerous as too little. Regardless of his behaviour while under the influence of the device, the staff of Atlantis are genuinely pleased to have Dr. McKay back to his old self. Flaws and all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Canadian five-dollar bill is blue and has a scene from a hockey game on one side.

**Author's Note:**

> Re-posted from LJ.


End file.
